Hugo Chavez

Does Argentina’s relationship with Iran pose a national security risk to the United States?

Iran has a lot riding on the survival—both literal and political—of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez. If the Bolivarian revolutionary beats cancer and wins another term as president, Tehran will continue to enjoy a strategic partnership with the world’s fifth largest oil exporter. But if Chávez dies, or if Venezuela’s democratic opposition finds a way to defeat him at the ballot box, the mullahs will lose their most important ally in Latin America, an ally who has effectively turned his country into an Iranian satellite.

Chávez disciple Rafael Correa has escalated his persecution of journalists.

Back in May, Ecuadorean voters approved a referendum that gave President Rafael Correa broader authority to regulate opposition journalists. At the time, Freedom House expressed concern that Correa was acquiring “undue influence over the country’s media,” and its senior program manager for Latin America, Viviana Giacaman, said that “Correa’s continuous demonization of independent media and the use of criminal defamation suits to silence journalists are having a chilling effect on the press in Ecuador.”

The new Peruvian president claims he has become a disciple of Lula. Thus far, the evidence supports that.

Last week, former army officer Ollanta Humala was inaugurated as president of Peru, and he vowed to maintain the successful economic policies adopted by his predecessor, Alan García. The significance of that vow should not be understated.

Rafael Correa’s latest anti-democratic power grab.

By endorsing the judicial and media “reforms” in this month’s constitutional referendum, Ecuador has moved a step closer to Venezuelan-style autocracy. President Rafael Correa, a Hugo Chávez disciple who has attacked opposition journalists, harassed private companies, and weakened democracy, will now have greater powers to regulate media content and punish reporters, judges, magistrates, and businessmen who disagree with his radical agenda. This represents a huge setback for those Ecuadoreans struggling to preserve the basic civil liberties that Americans take for granted.

The last time that Argentine foreign minister Héctor Timerman made international news, he was needlessly provoking a crisis in bilateral relations with the United States over a routine military-training exercise. A few weeks earlier, Timerman had accused the U.S. government of operating “torture” schools both at home and abroad.

What Hugo’s Venezuela has become.

If you’re looking for evidence that a nuclear Iran would be very difficult (if not impossible) to “contain,” visit Buenos Aires. Between 1992 and 1994, the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah launched not one but two murderous attacks in the Argentine capital, bombing both the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center.

With Russia’s help.

Last Friday in Moscow, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev signed a formal agreement obliging his country to help Venezuela launch a nuclear energy program. Vladimir Putin first floated the idea of Russian-Venezuelan nuclear cooperation back in 2008, following the Georgian war, and he signed a preliminary nuclear accord with Hugo Chávez this past April. On Friday, Medvedev and Chávez finalized the deal.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is visiting Tehran today, along with his sidekick, Bolivian president Evo Morales. It’s Chávez’s ninth trip in the past 18 months but this one’s special because he’s stopping over on his way back from Moscow, where he announced a nuclear deal with the Russians.

“Before we get off the plane, I might ask you to take my laptop and cell phone through the airport for me,” said my traveling companion. “In case I get arrested upon landing.” “Ok,” I answered hesitantly. “No problems.”

More reactions to Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Prize.

Ellen Bork's roundup of Nobel Peace Prize reactions yesterday deserves a postscript. Hugo Chávez of Venezuela sucked up to his ideological comrades in Beijing (not to mention very large customers of Venezuelan oil) in memorable fashion:

Latin America’s dictators are losing, and the forces of freedom and progress are winning.

“When the United States sneezes, Latin America catches a cold.” This old maxim proved true in 2008 and 2009, when the U.S. financial crisis deeply affected countries throughout the Western Hemisphere. Yet while the U.S. economy has been struggling through a painfully weak recovery, Latin America’s rebound has been remarkably strong.

'The age of useful idiots is not quite dead yet.'

What causes Western intellectuals and journalists to suspend their critical faculties and euphorically embrace genocidal anti-Western regimes and tyrants like the Islamic Republic of Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq?

Chile and Mexico have renewed diplomatic ties with Tegucigalpa.

In recent days, Chile and Mexico became the latest Latin American countries to reestablish formal diplomatic relations with Honduras, which (unfairly) became a pariah after the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya last summer.

Christopher Hitchens on Hugo Chávez.

Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a very large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap.